Single Women and the US Women’s Movement: Insights from India

by E. Kay Trimberger

Last fall, I began to study single women in India in preparation for  attending a Women’s Studies conference in New Delhi in January 2008. I knew beforehand that marriage was even more dominant there, and that the number of single women was proportionally much smaller. I found census figures as confirmation: 89.5% of Indian women between the ages of 25-59 are married, as compared with 65% of American women in the same age group. As for the unmarried women in that age group, the "never marrieds" account for 2.5% in India versus 16% in the U.S., while the percentage of divorced women in that population is 17% in the U.S. as opposed to a mere 1% in India. The percentage of Indian widows is 7%, higher than the 2% rate in America. (Sources: 2000 U.S. Census, 2001 Indian Census).

I expected to find  feminist organizing of Indian widows, since their plight has been widely publicized. Nor was I surprised to find that the long-standing, large, and diverse Indian women’s movement focused on issues such as marriage/family reform and ending violence against women (including rape, wife-beating and wife-burning), as well as addressing women’s poverty, and caste and class differences. I was startled, however, to discover concrete examples of Indian feminists bringing together diverse groups of single women (e.g., the never-married, divorced, deserted wives and widows), agitating for  recognition of their common interests as singles. In America, our women’s movement has never done so. In reflecting on the possible reasons why Indian feminists have organized singles while we in the U.S. have not, I gained  insights into how our women’s movement could initiate a new campaign to address the  needs of U.S. women who spend an increasing percentage of their life span single.

Against all odds?

by Renée Bergland

When I started my book on the nineteenth-century scientist Maria Mitchell, I expected to find that she had triumphed against impossible odds.  “Bias and Barriers” against women’s achievement in the science are pretty intense in the twenty-first century, and I presumed that the obstacles must have been much harsher nearly two hundred years ago. My presumptions were bolstered by earlier accounts of Mitchell that tended to emphasize her exceptional qualities and minimize the encouragement she received from her family and her community. The great surprise for me was that Mitchell faced relatively little bias. In her time, girls were thought of as naturally scientific—and science itself was considered a feminine pastime.

The shocks of history can be hard to parse. On one hand, it’s exciting to realize that there was a time (not that long ago) when a girl like the young Maria Mitchell grew up believing that there was nothing preventing her from achieving scientific greatness. On the other hand, it’s a bit discouraging to realize that when I was born in New York City in the late twentieth century, the odds were worse for girls in astronomy than they had been when Mitchell was born on Nantucket more than a hundred and fifty years before. To add to the depression factor, I worried that uncovering Mitchell’s advantages might make her achievements seem less impressive.

Caroline Healey Dall

by Helen Deese

Each time I hear a news report of an American woman's breaking a new gender barrier--Madeleine Albright's becoming the first woman named as Secretary of State, Nancy Pelosi's becoming the first woman elected as Speaker of the House of Representatives, or, more recently, Hillary Rodham Clinton's coming to be the first woman who is a serious contender for a major party's presidential nomination--I can't help wondering what Caroline Healey Dall would have thought. Dall is the woman who has been my almost daily companion for almost a quarter of a century. Although she died nearly a hundred years ago (in 1912) at the age of ninety, Caroline Dall remains a lively presence for me, and I frequently play the game of trying to analyze what she would do or think in response to a particular twenty-first century event or dilemma. As both an abolitionist and a feminist, would she think it a higher priority for the country to elect its first black president or its first woman president? Although I cannot be certain of her position on such questions, I am sure that she would have been engrossed by them. I am also confident that she would have known her answers instantly and that the chances of her changing her mind would be almost nil, for she was a strong-minded and highly opinionated woman. 

Link Roundup: Margaret Seltzer a sociopath? The Sexing of Science. Lowlights of the Presidential Race.

Is Margaret Seltzer, aka Margaret B. Jones, aka the latest memoirist to be exposed as a fraud, a sociopath who skillfully manipulated her benefactors in the publishing industry? Amy Alexander, co-author of Lay My Burden Down: Suicide and the Mental Health Crisis among African-Americans, ponders the question of blame in the Nation:

Could it be as simple as a case of innocent victims--the editor, the agent, the writing teacher--being duped by one sociopathic young lady?

Maybe. But it also may also be true that when it comes to a hard-luck gang story, McGrath, Bender and others involved in the publication of Love and Consequences were more inclined to err on the side of sensationalism and exploitation over the hard work of grooming an author who might give readers genuine authenticity. And it is more than a bit ironic that their apparent quest for vividly told ghetto authenticity led them to nurture and promote a white woman writer whose story, even if it were true, represented only a one-dimensional version of the Authentic Black Experience.

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The Nantucket Independent highlights the life of native daughter Maria Mitchell, whose life in science is explored in the forthcoming Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science by Renée Bergland.

Throughout the book, Bergland examines Mitchell's rise from 1847, when she witnessed the flash of a comet... to becoming the "computer of Venus" employed by the Nautical Almanac to calculate by math the orbit of that planet; to her hiring as the first professor of astronomy at Vassar College for women; and to the close of the 1800s when women's roles in the sciences were discouraged and Mitchell lamented that she might be the last of the nation's female scientists.

Bergland notes that while the word "scientist" had no masculine association at the start of the 19th century, by 1873 a male Harvard Medical School faculty member posited that women were physiologically unable to study science and that those who pursued the subject with vigor risked becoming "thoroughly masculine in nature or hermaphroditic in mind."

As of 1875, 10 years after Mitchell was appointed to her professorship, the move toward a male scientific role model had gained societal dominance.

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The Rev. C. Welton Gaddy compiles the worst moments in the race for "Pastor-in-Chief." Watch them on YouTube, where the video has been added to the Beacon Broadside favorites. Mitt Romney's speech on faith in America didn't even make Gaddy's top ten.

Link Roundup: Seed Vaults, Marriage, Reproduction, Updates

"Near Arctic, Seed Vault Is a Fort Knox of Food", in the New York Times last week, discussed the efforts to create a seed repository as a backup of our seed supply. Claire Hope Cummings, in her new book, Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds, discusses the "Doomsday Vault" in more depth, and ties its mission to the struggles to maintain genetic diversity in agriculture despite the increasing privatization of seeds by agribusiness. You can hear Cummings on NPR's OnPoint tomorrow. [UPDATE: Here's the link to the segment.]

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Check out Nancy Polikoff, author of Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage, at the Washington Post, the Washington Blade, the Los Angeles Times, and on her new blog, where Polikoff, an expert on gay and lesbian family law, highlights issues in the news that affect the legal rights of all families.

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Mark Winne, author of Closing the Food Gap, appeared on WUWM's Lake Effect radio show. Listen here.

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Kathryn Joyce, whose book Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement, is forthcoming from Beacon Press in 2009, wrote in the Nation about the real motives behind worries that there's a looming European "demographic disaster." The piece was cross-posted at RHRealityCheck, where Kathryn has previously posted about Quiverfull, an anti-birth control movement that urges Christian families to "leave the number of children they have entirely in the hands of God."

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Glenn Branch sent us an update to his post on the evolution debate in Florida (also added as an update to the post):

It happened. On February 29, state senator Ronda Storms (R–Valrico) introduced a bill, SB 2692 [pdf], styled “The Academic Freedom Act.” Purporting to protect the right of teachers to “objectively present scientific information relevant to the full range of scientific views regarding biological and chemical evolution in connection with teaching any prescribed curriculum regarding chemical or biological origins” and the right of students not to be “penalized in any way because he or she subscribes to a particular position or view regarding biological or chemical evolution,” the bill would not affect the content of the standards, although it is clear that it was introduced at the behest at those who opposed their excellent treatment of evolution. A string of similar bills in Alabama—HB 391 and SB 336 in 2004; HB 352, SB 240, and HB 716 in 2005; HB 106 and SB 45 in 2006—failed. With only sixty days in the regular legislative session, perhaps the Florida legislature will be able to find something useful to do, instead of wasting its time mollifying creationists.

The Republican Candidates’ Abortion Problem: It's not Just about Abortion Anymore

by Carole Joffe

"I haven’t sorted out the penalties...of course there’s got to be some penalties to enforce the law, whatever they may be." So spoke George H.W. Bush, in one of the major gaffes of his first presidential run in 1988, during a debate with his opponent, Michael Dukakis. Bush, who had only recently begun to trumpet his antiabortion sentiments to dubious Republican social conservatives, was responding to a question about appropriate punishment for women who would obtain illegal abortions should Roe v Wade be overturned. The next morning, after frantic late night discussions, Bush’s handlers called the press for a "clarification." Bush meant to say doctors who performed abortions, not women who received them, should be jailed in such a situation.

Twenty years later, Mike Huckabee, running for the Republican nomination, makes no such missteps. With none of the discomfort that Bush I showed, Huckabee at his rallies gets the party line of the antiabortion movement right: if Roe is overturned, doctors who perform abortions should be punished, while the recipients of such abortions must be seen as "victims."

But Huckabee, a former Baptist preacher and the candidate of choice of evangelicals, is an exception in the clarity and consistency of his position on abortion. There is a long history of "evolution" on abortion from politicians in both parties. For example, Bill Clinton and Al Gore, both from Southern states, had mixed records of support for abortion early in their careers before they each went on to become staunch allies of the abortion rights movement. But in the campaign of 2008, it is mainly the Republican candidates who are squirming.

Monday Link Roundup: Interfaith Heroes, Praise for Our World, Womb Outsourcing, and Vet Suicides

Read the Spirit, an ambitious and thoughtful site devoted to issues of spirituality and religion, is devoting a portion of their impressive energies to a month of Interfaith Heroes. Featured so far, brief, illuminating essays on the lives of such disparate voices for tolerance as Moses Maimonides, Jaluddin Muhammed Akbar, and Roger Williams.

(Incidentally, we also owe a word of thanks to Read the Spirit for their link to us and a very flattering mention for Beacon Press generally and the blog specifically.)

In other good reviews of work from Beacon, the L.A. Times ran a thoughtful and moving piece by Susan Salter Reynolds about Our World, a book that collects Molly Malone Cook's photographs with accompanying text by her life partner, the poet Mary Oliver.

The photographs Oliver has chosen reflect Cook's intuitive relationship with her subjects (even inanimate objects). The little girl on the stoop in New York City looks directly at the photographer, as does a kindly Robert Motherwell and a fierce, almost intimidating Walker Evans. Even though most of the photographs are dominated by a central person or object, there is a lot to look at in the margins, all part of the story. The stance of her subjects -- reading a book, looking through a telescope -- is always distinctive, creating the mood of the entire composition. The two photos of Oliver could have been taken only by someone who knew the subject well.

Marketplace ran a story over the holiday break that many, including Judith Warner on the New York Times opinion blogs, found troubling. The story highlighted the practice of "womb outsourcing," an increasingly popular surrogacy option involving hopeful parents from wealthy countries paying what amounts to "bargain rates" (when compared with the high cost of surrogacy in the U.S.) for surrogates in India. Amy Tiemann at MojoMom condemned the practice – "Is this what colonialism looks like in the 21st century?" – and invited Barbara Katz Rothman, author of Weaving a Family: Untangling Race and Adoption, to comment as well:

We women of the wealthy world profit from the exploitation of poor women, men and children with almost every shirt we put on our backs, almost every bite of food we take. We exploit people in poverty and never have to think about it. And now we can profit in our motherhood -- but unlike the shirt and the food, this time the product is going to grow up and demand an explanation. (Read more here)

And, to return to a topic  we discussed during Veterans Day Week last November, Penny Coleman, author of Flashback: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Suicide, and the Lessons of War, has been writing about the issue of veteran suicides regularly at Alternet. Her latest post is an account of her experience testifying before Congress alongside Mike and Kim Bowman, who lost their son to suicide after he returned from Iraq. In the piece she quotes Rep. Cliff Stearns of Florida, who displayed a stunning lack of tact and understanding of the issue when he passed the buck to the Bowman family for their son's death:

"The building up of the self-esteem is the key," he said, "and the parents somehow have to convince him or her that everything is going to be all right, we're going to work through it. And in this case it didn't happen, and so, tragic and sad."

It is precisely because of this tendency to blame the victims that the work that Coleman and the Bowmans do is so important. The hearing ultimately resulted in a dressing down of the head of mental health at the VA by the chair of the Veterans Affairs Committee, Bob Filner, along with the appeal that the VA start listening to the stories of families who have lost loved ones to suicide. Excuses and passing the buck are not going to save any lives.

Et tu, Democrats?! Abstinence-Only Sex Education and The Politics of the Budget

by Carole Joffe

After nearly seven years of the George W. Bush presidency and its regressive sexual and reproductive politics, it is no surprise that this administration continues to staunchly support "abstinence-only sex  education."  The fact that study after study—including one commissioned by Congress itself has shown these programs to be ineffective does not trouble this president, who, in the face of inconvenient findings, has consistently allowed  ideology  to trump science.  Whether the issue is global warming or weapons of mass destruction or condom effectiveness, this administration is infamous for, as a Bush administration official—famously and unapologetically—put it, "creating its own reality." (New York Times magazine, October 17, 2004).

And it is no surprise that the Republican candidates for president support abstinence-only programs. This issue remains of great symbolic importance to the Religious Right base of the Republican Party. Though some observers say this movement is in decline, evangelicals remain very influential in the nominating process (witness Mike Huckabee’s recent meteoric rise), and candidates cannot afford to offend them on this issue. (And to be sure, abstinence-only is more than just symbolically important to many on the right; as The Nation so ably detailed, in "The Abstinence Gluttons," those  who receive  contracts to deliver these programs are raking in millions).

But Democrats supporting "abstinence-only," especially after the November 2006 election, when they regained control of the House and Senate?!  A powerful Democratic committee chair proposing to give even more to these programs than the Bush administration has asked for?!  No, this is not a Saturday Night Live or Jon Stewart parody. This is Washington politics. In a move that stunned advocates for "comprehensive" sex education—that is, programs that include discussion of both abstinence and birth control options—Congressman Dave Obey of Wisconsin, the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, proposed increasing by $28 million the current abstinence-only allocation of $113 million. Obey made this move in order to lure Republican votes for Congress’s main domestic spending bill.    (In fairness, an equal increase was suggested for Title X, a federal family planning program that has been consistently under-funded during the Bush years.)

Female Vets Fight Another Battle at Home: Restoring their Spirits

by Helen Benedict

Over this past year, I have talked to forty or so women soldiers for my forthcoming book, The Lonely Soldier: Women at War in Iraq, and it has become clear to me that they have a set of needs quite different from those of men. All soldiers must deal with the roadside bombs, mortar and grenade attacks, and gunfire that are a part of daily life in this war, where the front line is everywhere and not even bases are safe; and all soldiers must cope with seeing the dead and wounded close up and with, perhaps, having killed. But women have additional burdens: they are sexually harassed by their male comrades day in and day out; one in three is sexually attacked or raped; and they are pressured every minute to conform to a military culture that is intractably male. "The Army consistently tries to make women into men," as Sergeant Sarah Scully of the Military Police wrote to me. "Any sign that you are a woman means you are automatically ridiculed or treated as inferior."